Tough to predict Nevada justices’ decision on ‘Who’s your Mama?’

It’s always foolish to try to read from their questions and comments how Nevada Supreme Court justices will decide a case, but after watching them Monday, I’m going to take a guess in the case of “Who’s your Mama?”

In the child custody case involving a lesbian couple who used the egg from Veronica Damon and implanted it in Sha’Kayla St. Mary’s womb, my best guess is that they will order shared custody between the two women, who broke up 11 months after the girl, now 6, was born..

Senior Judge Joe Bonaventure, the trial judge, had agreed with Damon that St. Mary was just a surrogate and had no parental visitation rights. He ordered that St. Mary have one day a week visitation rights. He also told her to stop telling the child to call her “mommy.”

She sued, asking for equal time. She cited the co-parenting agreement they signed and the merged last name of the child as a few of the signs she was not a surrogate but an equal partner in a relationship.

Nevada law doesn’t address situations like this between gay couples living in a state where marriage is not legal for them..

Justices Kris Pickering and Nancy Saitta, the only women on the court, both expressed their concerns that during the district court proceedings, the child had not been represented by an independent attorney looking out for the girl’s best interests.

Damon’s attorney Bradley Schrager countered that the child was too young to testify at the time of the lower court’s proceedings.

“Why can’t there be two mamas?” Saitta said.

Justice James Hardesty noted that one of the issues was whether Bonaventure erred when he decided the relationship was not a co-parenting relationship but a surrogate situation, as Damon has since claimed.

St. Mary’s attorney, Joseph Nold, said “all of this court’s concerns were not addressed by the trial judge.”

Just a guess, but I think they’ll find both these women were mamas of this child and that Bonaventure was mistaken when he said their written co-parenting agreement was unenforceable.

Since Nevada law is not specific, Chief Justice Michael Cherry ended the hearing describing the case as “challenging.”

In other words, I may be wrong.